Category: News

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Hespeler, 3 July 2022 © Scott McAndless
2 Kings 5:1-14, Psalm 30, Isaiah 66:10-14, Psalm 66:1-9, Galatians 6:7-16, Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

https://youtu.be/Xk1bUSQhlMo

In 1973, there was a bank robbery that took place in the city of Stockholm, Sweden. In the course of their crime, the bank robbers took four hostages. The hostages were eventually released unharmed. But the public, and particularly the media, were rather puzzled by how the hostages reacted in the aftermath. They defended their former captors and even refused to testify against them when they were put on trial.

For many, this reaction was so irrational that they decided that it was basically some form of insanity. They called it the Stockholm Syndrome, a term that is still brought out and applied in similar situations today. It is defined as a condition in which hostages develop a psychological bond with their captors during captivity.

Why we Like Stockholm Syndrome

Journalists love to talk about the Stockholm Syndrome whenever they report on stories about hostages, but the fact of the matter is that psychologists are rather skeptical that such a thing truly exists. A closer look at the events that did take place in Stockholm in 1973 inspires many doubts. It turns out that the hostages in that ill-fated bank robbery may have been more upset with the police than they were in love with their captors. They were, in fact, very angry with the callous way in which the police had acted and endangered their lives. That likely had more to do with their refusal to testify than did any love for the robbers.

Is it Actually Real?

But the idea of Stockholm Syndrome remains a powerful one. Something similar is often proposed in discussions of slavery – both in the ancient world and in the pre-civil war American South. “But slaves often loved and were devoted to their masters,” the protest goes. “Surely that is an indication that slavery wasn’t so bad.” But I rather suspect that, just as in the case of the robbery in Stockholm, if you look closely the whole thing about slaves loving their masters it is not so simple as that.

So let’s do that. Let’s look closely at one of my favourite stories of a slave that apparently did something out of love for her master

The Aramean Raid

Abriyah woke up screaming. It had been the same nightmare; it was always the same nightmare. In her dreams the Arameans had come yet again, storming into her village in the middle of the day. There had been no warning and no real opportunity for the people to prepare themselves. Abriyah had been out of her house fetching some water from the village well. She would never see her home or her family again. The men had come upon her and two other girls who were at the well. Before she even knew what was happening, her hands had been bound and she had been unceremoniously dumped into the back of an oxcart.

Later that same day she and the others were taken out of the cart and brought before the raiders as they celebrated. They were dividing up their spoils with each man claiming his share of the livestock, fruits and grain. Abriyah had no illusions that she was anything other than just another piece of plunder to them.

The Boogeyman

As she stood there in her ripped tunic, on display before the leering company, they all suddenly fell silent as one man stepped forward. He stood there with such an air of authority and power that there was no question he was the leader of the raiding party. She knew right away that this could be none other than Naaman, a fighter who was so cruel and effective that he had become something of a boogeyman to the people of Israel.

Parents would warn their children when they put them to bed that, if they didn’t settle down and go to sleep right away, that Naaman would come and get them and take them away. Well now, here the boogeyman was, as real as real could be. And he had finally come for her. She cried out in her sleep, cried out to her parents yelling that she was sorry and that she would be a better girl in the future. But she woke to discover that her parents were gone and that she would never see them again.

Life in Naaman’s Household

Naaman chose Abriyah as his plunder from that day’s work. It was indeed a chieftain’s share. He took her home and gave her to his wife as a servant. And Abriyah quickly found herself subjected to seemingly endless toil in the kitchen and around the house.

Naaman was everything that she had expected of him. He was cruel and completely self-absorbed. There was a haughtiness to him. He seemed to think that everything Aramean was better than anything anywhere else. The rivers of Aram were better than any other streams. The food of his land was far superior to what anyone else ate.

As a result, because she was an Israelite, he consistently treated Abriyah as if she were an imbecile. He was rude and crude and he never cared about her feelings because, as far as he was concerned, she was little better than an animal. She didn’t have human feelings.

Naaman Falls Ill

So, life was far from easy in Naaman’s household. But then it suddenly became so much worse. Naaman came home one day from his latest raid, and something was wrong. The skin on his arms and back and legs soon turned red and he scratched at them until they bled. If she had thought that he was a difficult man before, he quickly became unbearable. He was in constant pain and discomfort, and it quickly stripped away any patience or sympathy he might have ever had.

And Abriyah was often the one who was closest when the rage hit him. She was certainly the one that he could attack without consequence. The life of a common slave that she had once had in the household now seemed almost like a lost dream. She began to dream of escaping back to her homeland, but she knew that escape was impossible.

Finding Comfort

Whenever Abriyah found a few moments of respite in her miserable life, or when she lay awake in her bed at night, too afraid to go to sleep for fear of her nightmares, she tried to comfort herself with memories of her home. She told herself the stories that her parents had once told her – stories of Abraham and of Moses. But she found particular comfort in the popular stories that were told in her village about the prophets, especially the stories about Elijah and Elisha. People eagerly told these tales because they were so exciting and because these men were still alive and might well pass through the village at any time.

Abriyah had always felt as if these men were her protectors, or at least they would be if they were given the chance. Again and again, they had taken on the enemies of Israel, including the Arameans, and had triumphed in surprising and fantastic ways. Why, it was even said that once the prophet Elisha had defeated an entire Aramaean army by striking them blind and leading them into a trap! She began to dream of the possibility that Elisha, who was still living the last she heard, would find out about her plight and come and save her.

Talking About her Hope

Once finding some small reason to hope – no matter how unlikely her salvation was – she found that she simply could not stop thinking about it. That also meant that she could not stop talking about it either. She began to talk to all of the other slaves in the household about how Elisha was going to come and save her and about how he would be able to help all of them too.

And then one day, she even spoke to her mistress. She came upon her at an unguarded moment in her chambers and found her weeping. She suddenly realized that, even though she had the status of wife and freewoman, in some ways her mistress was no less a captive in this household than she was. The mistress was certainly not spared from the cruelty that Naaman could dole out when he was taken up in his pain and misery.

And so, Abriyah went to speak to her mistress. That was when something came to mind that she could say to comfort her. “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy. And then perhaps you could find some peace.”

To Israel for a Cure

Much to her surprise, Abriyah’s comment caused quite a stir in the household. Both Naaman and his wife were feeling pretty desperate lately. She went running to him immediately with what she had heard. And, even if Naaman had a hard time believing that anyone from Israel could offer anything of value, he was desperate enough to follow up. He did it in the most typical way possible for him. He was arrogant and demanding. He put the king of Israel into a very compromising position that the prophet Elisha had to save him from. And then, when the prophet told him that he had to bathe in a filthy Israelite river in order to become clean, he almost lost it.

But then something happened. Something broke through and Naaman was healed. In many ways, to tell the truth, the biggest miracle wasn’t the fact that his skin condition suddenly improved. By far, the biggest miracle, at least as far as Abriyah and the rest of the household were concerned, was that something had finally broken the arrogance that Naaman carried in his heart.

After he Returned

Naaaman returned to his household bringing with him two mule loads of soil that he had collected in the land of Israel. He understood, everyone understood, that certain gods belong to certain places. You could only worship a god in the place that belonged to that god. But Naaman had decided that now he had to worship Yahweh, the God of Israel, who had healed him of his skin condition. So, he had brought a little bit of the land of Israel so that he could set up an altar upon it to worship the God of Israel.

I wish I could tell you that, after he returned, Naaman was always kind and gentle with Abriyah and the others in the household. Many things about him didn’t change. He continued to be a fearsome war leader and raider. He did sometimes forget the lesson that he had learned, the lesson that people from other places might actually know things or have things of value. Sometimes the old arrogance did shine through. But there were times when he did look at Abriyah and remember to consider the possibility that, even though she was an Israelite, she might know a few things about the world.

The life of a slave remained the life of a slave. Abriyah did not find that her labours or fears were lightened at all. But I will say that her nightmares got better for one reason. She did have the opportunity to worship when Naaman worshiped upon the piece of Israelite soil that he had brought back. And so, in that place, she did find a connection with her home and with the God that had felt so very far away. And that brought her some comfort.

What is this Story About?

For some reason I remember hearing the story of the slave girl who served Naaman’s wife back in my Sunday school days. I remember how I was told to read that story. That little girl – who, of course, doesn’t have a name in the Bible and that I simply had to give a name to in order to tell her story – was held up as the example of a perfect evangelist. She was lauded as someone who did what we are all supposed to do and tell other people about Jesus.

Now, on one level, I don’t really have a problem with the idea that people should be willing to share with others how their faith in Jesus has helped them in their life. I don’t appreciate how some people do that in an imposing or coercive way, but just sharing that honestly can be a wonderful sharing of your own life with somebody else. But I am going to suggest that, if that’s all you get from the story, that might be a bit of a problem.

Failing to Support Victims

You see, the Christian tradition has a history of putting people who have been victimized in various ways into a position where they feel an obligation to endure their suffering without complaint in the service of the gospel. There are too many stories of abused women, for example, who were told to remain in their abusive marriages as a gospel witness. There are too many stories of people victimized by the church in some way who were forced to be quiet about it because it would somehow damage the witness of the church. That, I must say loud and clear, is simply wrong and the very opposite of a good witness.

So I am not, in any way, willing to read the story of this girl in a way that minimizes the trauma and abuse a captive at that time in history would have suffered. Any sort of simplistic understanding of this story that turns her into someone with Stockholm Syndrome, someone who only loves her masters, is a failure to struggle with some pretty dark history. I have to read her as simply doing whatever she can to hold on to her identity and save herself in a horrible situation. That is what we all need to do.

And if God manages to bring some good out of a horrible situation for ourselves or for anyone else, well that’s just the amazing kind of God that we have. But none of that should be taken to mean that it is God’s desire or will that anyone be a victim or tolerate abuse. That is simply not the kind of God that we have. And I think that that needs to be said

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June 26, 2022

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Hespeler, 26 June 2022 © Scott McAndless
Exodus 2:1-10, Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20, Galatians 5:1, 13-25, Luke 9:51-62

When powerful people decide that holding onto their power and wealth is more important than things like justice and the rights of others, evil things can happen. And the big question then becomes what people can do to resist. What can they do when they have no power or voice? That is not a new question. It is one that comes up again and again throughout the history of the world.

It is true, of course, that we do not have to deal with anything quite as evil today as an order to toss an entire generation of a particular ethnic group into a river in infancy. But just because the evil of our world hasn’t risen to the level of active genocide doesn’t mean that we will never have to deal with the question. I mean, if we wait until that point is reached, we may be too late.

Biblical Heroes

So, I do think it would be helpful to look at some biblical heroes who dealt with that very challenge and who won. And when it comes to that, I can hardly think of better examples than three extraordinary women in the Book of Exodus.

I know that we have often come to think that the Bible, produced as it was in a very patriarchal society, has a habit of dismissing women and suggesting that they really have nothing that they can contribute. But this story, I believe, is a perfect demonstration of just how wrong that assumption is.

Pharaoh’s Problem

Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, had a problem, a big problem. But it wasn’t necessarily an unusual problem. In fact, it was a problem as old as civilization itself. Ever since the beginning, you see, civilization has had a big built-in problem. Civilization, the building and inhabiting of cities, was something that was only possible because of the development of agriculture to such a level that societies were able to produce a surplus. Season after season, more food and goods were produced than the workers themselves needed to survive.

Civilization was this incredible invention that allowed a small elite to take control of that surplus and keep it for themselves. Yes, they also provided something in return for taking it – they provided security and they took care of matters of administration. Above all they provided a religion that gave meaning to the endless toil of the great mass of people. Surely the people should be grateful for that.

On His Own

But the people weren’t as grateful as they should be. Sometimes they were restive and rebellious. And that was the root of the problem because Pharaoh was aware of one inescapable fact. There were more of them than there were people on his side – a lot more. In fact, it was almost as if it was Pharaoh alone against all of them.

Yes, he had priests and retainers and troops. He had a whole class of nobles underneath him, but none of them benefitted from the system more than he did. He really was the 1%, except it was more like the 0.001 per cent. And as soon as all of the rest figured out that simple fact and found a way to work together, he was done for.

The Hebrew Problem

So, this was a problem that Pharaoh had been constantly aware of, but one particular aspect of it had been troubling him of late. There was a group of people who had been put to work constructing the vast complexes where Pharaoh stored his ever-growing wealth. They were nothing but slaves, but they had begun to form a cohesive identity.

They were called Hebrews and the thing that united them, above all, was the worship of some wild desert god who was beyond the control of the Egyptian religion that was dominated by Pharaoh. Everyday that they grew in strength and in numbers. If they only realized the strength that they had because of their unity of purpose and identity, they had the potential of bringing down the entire system. Pharaoh had to do something about them.

A Failed Plan

He had already attempted to slow the growth by asserting government control over which women could and could not have children. He did this by ordering the Egyptian midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, to kill all of the male Hebrew children at birth. But somehow, Pharaoh was still trying to figure out how, the midwives had betrayed him and allowed the boys to live. But they had clearly double crossed him, and so it appeared he was going to have to come up with a much more open approach to this problem.

Jochebed

When Jochebed, the wife of Amram, heard about Pharaoh’s decree, she was horrified. Pharaoh’s plan that all of the male children born to the Hebrews should be cast into the Nile River, was not only cruel, it was a clear attempt to wipe out the very identity of a people. The Nile River was not just a waterway for the Egyptians, after all, it was a god. With its annual flooding, the Nile River brought life to every single person who lived along its course.

But it seemed as if Pharaoh couldn’t stand the idea that the Nile shed its blessings upon all the people regardless of their station in society. It watered the fields of the peasants as well as the gardens of the rich. And that was simply unacceptable. And so, Pharaoh was determined to transform the life-giving Nile into a ravenous instrument of death. That would teach the people, all of them, that they must look to no one but the king himself to sustain them.

Her Plan

In the face of such unmitigated evil, Jochebed came up with a plan. The decree had gone out when she was only a few months pregnant. She knew, somehow she knew, that it was going to be a boy. And so, she laid her plans. By the time she was beginning to show, she withdrew from all social life. No one must know that a child was on the way. And then, once her boy was born, she managed to keep him hidden as long as she could.

But, by the time he was three months old, she knew that she could not keep him hidden any longer. That was when she made a fateful decision. She would do as Pharoah had decreed. But it would be a malicious compliance. Oh, she would throw him into the Nile alright. But she would also do a couple of other things.

Into the River in a Basket

First, she would place the boy in a basket that she wove out of papyrus (a gift of the Nile itself) and plastered with bitumen and pitch. This would turn the river from the ravenous beast that Pharaoh had declared it to be into a cradling womb for the rebirth of her son.

Second, she would do this in faith – with the trust that there was a God (even if she did not yet know what that God’s name was) who was more powerful than the Nile or even than the divine Pharaoh. Even more importantly, she did it with the faith that such a God cared about her people who had no other protector in the land of Egypt.

The Princess

When the princess caught sight of the basket bobbing in the river, she knew that her day was about to change completely. She knew very well what people thought of her. She was nothing more than a princess – an adornment to the household of Pharaoh. She was just there to be beautiful and to be quiet. She was supposed to spend her days wallowing in luxury and taking endless baths in the Nile.

But she was more than just a pretty face. Pharaoh would have been shocked to hear it, but she actually had a brain, and she understood the very real threat that Pharaoh was trying to counter with his latest decree. But she had real problems with what he was doing.

A Hebrew Baby

When the basket was brought to shore and the princess looked inside, she knew without a doubt that it had to be a Hebrew boy. She understood how desperate Hebrew mothers had grown. What other possible explanation could there be?

But, realizing that, the princess knew she had a choice. On one level, she knew that she was supposed to side with her own people and her own class. The Hebrews were outsiders, and they were a potential threat to the stability of the system. But the princess also knew that she was a woman. And as a woman, she was an outsider to power in her own country. That made her feel as if she might have more in common with the poor woman who, in desperation, had thrown her young son into the Nile. But she simply did not know what she ought to do.

Miriam

Miriam might have been nothing more than a little girl, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t know what was going on. She knew what people in the community had been talking about, about the terrible thing that had been demanded by the pharaoh. And for months now she had been a witness to the anguish of her mother.

Miriam had done her part, of course, to keep the birth of her little brother from being noticed. She had often taken care of the child when Jochebed and Amram couldn’t be around. She understood how important it was to make sure that nobody outside of the house could hear the noise that he made. Of course, that had only been getting harder and harder as time went by.

Her Part

And so, when Miriam had seen her mother leave the house carrying the child and silently weeping, it wasn’t that hard for her to guess what was happening. She followed and she observed from a distance as her mother laid the child into the small basket and pushed him out into the current. Once she had done this, Jochebed collapsed in despair. She had done what she could do and had to leave the rest in the hands of her people’s God.

But somehow Miriam knew that she still had a part to play. She kept her eyes on the basket as it moved at a steady pace through the reeds that lined the shores, moved towards the place where the royal party often came down to bathe during the day.

Her Courage

And so, she saw the princess arrive. She saw the excitement and consternation as the basket was discovered. And even from the distance, she could see the confusion and indecision on the face of the princess as she contemplated the child.

And that was when Miriam, that poor slave child, that person with the least possible power and influence in this entire story, did the bravest thing she would ever do. She ran forward, past the guards who protected the princess, and then cried out to her in broken Egyptian. “I go and I get you nurse? I get Hebrew woman to nurse baby for you?”

You see, sometimes when people are struggling with a choice – sometimes when they know what is the right thing to do but are seized by indecision because they have never dared to be bold before, all they need is a little push. All they need is one small action that they can take towards doing the right thing because, if they can take that one step, the next will be easier and the next after that as well. Soon they have set themselves on a path towards doing the right thing, the thing they truly want to do. Miriam had provided the princess with that. All she needed to do was nod her head yes and Miriam was off like a shot to find her mother and present her as a wet nurse to the princess.

When Evil Plans are Laid

When powerful people do horrible things in order to maintain their power and position, the powerless often feel as if there is nothing that they can do. And it may be true, especially if we stand alone as individuals, that there is very little that we can do. When the weak stand alone, the powerful only need to pick them off one by one.

But the story in the Book of Exodus tells of three women who were quite powerless. Two of them were slaves, one of them was not even an adult and one was nothing more than an ornament for the powerful pharaoh. They did not conspire together, but they acted. They acted in faith, and they acted in solidarity. Though they might have had every reason not to find that solidarity. The princess in particular had no reason to find kinship with a Hebrew slave. But, simply by choosing solidarity and faith, they each played a key role that put pieces in place to disrupt all of Pharaoh’s evil plans. Now, if only we could find such courage. If only we could embrace such solidarity.

Our Zoom link for this week

You can find our worship for June 19, 2022 here.

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Hespeler, 19 June 2022 © Scott McAndless
1 Kings 19:1-15a, Psalm 42 and 43, Galatians 3:23-29, Luke 8:26-39 (Click to read)

We are told in the Gospel of Luke that one day, Jesus got into a boat with his disciples, and they sailed off and they landed on the opposite side of the Sea of Galilee in a place called the country of the Gerasenes. Jesus was a stranger there, an outsider. But they had perhaps at least heard of him and the notoriety he was gaining on the other side of the lake.

I know that many communities, if they were visited by people who had a certain amount of celebrity, would generally make a point of ensuring that some of their leading citizens would be there to meet them and make sure that they got a good impression. That is why I think it is rather significant that the first person that Jesus met in that country was about the worst representative that you could imagine. He was greeted by a very troubled young man.

The Man who Met Jesus

It was a man who had a fraught relationship with things like clothing and with housing. He tended to walk around naked and had set up a homeless encampment in the local graveyard. What is more, the Gerasenes clearly weren’t quite sure what to do with this man who caused no end of trouble. They had tried everything they could do as far as they were concerned, locking him up in chains and shackles and putting him under guard, but nothing prevented him from ruining their lives.

It makes me wonder. If Jesus were to come rowing up to the shores of our city, our society today, who could we imagine being the first one to go out and meet him? I could nominate a few people who would fit the bill. I’m sure it’s not a coincidence either that just about everyone who comes to my mind is also a young man. Society seems to have a long history of troubled young men.

Who Would Meet Jesus Today?

So, who might Jesus meet as he came to shore? Perhaps the young man who, five years ago, walked into a mosque in Quebec City and began to gun down worshipers there. Perhaps it would be the self-proclaimed involuntarily celibate man who, two years ago, ran down eleven people with a van on the streets of Toronto.

Or, in light of more recent events, how could we fail to mention the man who felt so threatened by the mere existence of black people in his country that he drove over 300 km to find a majority black community in Buffalo so that he could kill as many of them as possible as they shopped in a grocery store. And how could we fail to mention the very troubled young man who celebrated his eighteenth birthday by purchasing two high-powered high-capacity rifles and using them to shoot up an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas?

The Reaction to Troubled Young Men

I believe that, in many ways, we today react to such young men much like the Gerasenes did. Oh, we have tried all kinds of measures in order to prevent the devastation that they cause. We put them in chains, we lock them in shackles, we increase guards and security measures on every school and every other vulnerable place in our society. In some jurisdictions we put them to death.

But somehow it just keeps continuing to happen. Somehow another troubled young individual comes along sooner or later. And, while I agree that maybe taking a few steps towards making it harder for such troubled people to get their hands on highly effective and efficient killing machines, the truth of the matter is that even that is also treating a symptom and can only be a part of treating the underlying disease.

Jesus’ Approach

But Jesus came along that day with a different focus than the local people. He wasn’t there to punish this troubled young man. Jesus wasn’t interested in band aid solutions to the problems that plague us. Jesus was a healer. He did not simply deal with the symptoms of the problem – the fear and the violence that the presence of this young man caused in the community. Jesus was always interested in dealing with the underlying issues. That is what true healing is all about, after all.

So, what did Jesus do when he came on the scene? First and foremost, he engaged the young man as he was. The first words of Jesus that are reported to us form a simple question. “What is your name?” he asks. But, as the answer makes clear, he is not asking the young man to identify himself. He is asking for the name of the demon that possesses him.

Demon Possession

And we should be careful to understand what that means according to the understanding of that time and place. I know that we usually assume that we understand what they meant back then when they spoke about demon possession. I mean, we have all seen movies like The Exorcist, The Omen and Rosemary’s Baby. They have led us to believe that, those who believe in demon possession, always think of it as some sort of malevolent supernatural being that takes control of somebody’s body.

Now, it is true that there were people in Jesus’ time who believed that such things happened. But that is not the only kind of trouble that they described using the language of possession. You see, they understood most every ailment and trouble that people dealt with – including those we understand in medical terms – in exclusively spiritual terms.

Our Understanding is Different

We know that conditions like depression or addiction or anxiety disorders may have a whole host of medical, physiological, psychological and perhaps spiritual causes. Well, they only saw the spiritual causes of such things and so the only language they had to talk about them was spiritual language.

I don’t think that they were completely wrong in their approach – there are spiritual dimensions to such problems. But I also believe that we can only bring true healing to someone who is struggling when we address the whole person – body, mind and spirit. And I believe that Jesus, in his healing activities, did understand that. So what was Jesus doing when he asked the name of what it was that was plaguing this man? He was demonstrating an openness to consider that whole person and what he was struggling with. And the answer that he received spoke volumes.

Not One Single Cause

“Legion,” the young man said. And that was, first and foremost, a clear acknowledgment that all he was struggling with could not be reduced to a single cause. The cause was legion. I know that that is always going to be the temptation when there are populations struggling in our society. We always want to find just one thing to blame it on: violent video games, broken families, drugs. There have even people who’ve tried to blame it on abortion or the acceptance of LGBTQ+ people.

But you should be suspicious of any attempt to place the blame on one thing. It is almost never an attempt to come to terms with the real causes but rather an attempt to advance the speaker’s agenda and to keep everything else in society unchallenged and unchanged. The issues are always more complex. They are legion.

The Legions

“Legion,” the young man said. And I suspect that it was no mistake that he used the Latin term for the Roman troops that were occupying the whole territory. What were the legionaries there for if not to make sure that the people who were in charge remained in charge?

We are not told, of course, what events had led this young man to spiral into his violent and self-destructive way of life, but I think, given that his troubled mind went immediately to the word “legion,” it is very likely that the structure of his society, maintained by the legions, had something to do with it.

Structural Issues

And as we think of our troubled young people, we have to be willing to take into account the ways in which they have experienced a system that feels like it is stacked against them. They were raised in a world where it was considered normal to have active shooter drills in their schools – where they were taught to expect that there would be people who were trying to shoot them. They are living in a situation where few people like them have any reasonable path to afford their own home or have job security. They have lived their whole lives wondering whether the environment, as we have known it, is going to be able to maintain their population.

These are systemic problems and I realize that not every young individual will experience them in exactly the same way. Any one of these issues alone might not be an insurmountable problem, but when they are legion they do become overwhelming.

The Problem with Healing

The story of Jesus and this troubled young man is ultimately a very hopeful one because Jesus does bring healing to him. Jesus does this by addressing the whole person and that is what we need to do. But there is another aspect of this story that is rather troubling we need to face up to it. We have to recognize that there is enormous resistance to that healing power in the story.

The story ends like this: “Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind… Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear.”

Now how does that make sense? Here they have feared this man and the havoc he has caused for a long time. But now that Jesus has apparently eliminated this terrible issue, they are upset and they want him gone. Why, it is almost as if they do not like the fact that this man has found some healing.

Healing Disrupts

I believe that that is exactly what is going on because, in order for this man to find healing, the system that was at work in that community had to be disrupted. How else can we understand the destruction of the entire herd of pigs being necessary to the healing? There is no question that such a destruction would have dealt a savage blow to the local economy.

But there is more to it than that, something systemic. People have long wondered why there might have been such a large pork industry in that region. I mean, they weren’t raising hogs in order to sell to the Jewish population, so who were they selling to?

They must have been selling to the foreign occupying troops. They must have been selling to the legions. Yes, they were dependent on the industrial military complex for their local economy. They were deeply embedded in a system that relied on everything remaining exactly the way it was. And the way that Jesus had healed this man had demonstrated to them that his healing required a disruption of that system. So, yes, of course they wanted Jesus out of there.

Why we Don’t Fix Things

And that is precisely the problem with where we are when it comes to dealing with this never-ending crop of troubled young men who are wreaking havoc in our society. Healing is possible; something better is possible. The problem is that such healing will only come with our willingness to change the systems that are maintaining this status quo. And there are certain powers in our society, very influential powers who profit enormously from the way that things are set up right now, who are dead set on making sure that that doesn’t happen. They won’t hesitate to run the healer out of town.

So there we are; that is the challenge that is before us. But let me just say that the hope presented in this story is real. Jesus did bring healing to that young man because he didn’t care about how much it cost. And when troubled people of any age and any gender encounter people who have that kind of sense of priority, I really do believe that healing is not only possible, it is nearly inevitable. It is a question of priorities and it is a question of us being willing to engage people with a compassion and a level of commitment that knows that there are things that are more important than just maintaining things the way that they have always been. Such disruption, in fact, has always been very much at the heart of Jesus’ message about the kingdom of God

If you missed worshipping with us on Sunday, you can view the service here.

For families this week.

https://youtu.be/pXWH0gIyu-E

Hespeler 5 June, 2022 © Scott McAndless – Pentecost, Communion
Genesis 11:1-9, Psalm 104:24-34, 35b, Acts 2:1-21, John 14:8-27 (click to read)

I want you to do something for me. I want you, for the next couple of minutes, not to look at the reading that we had from the Book of Acts a few minutes ago. Do not look at it on your bulletin or in your Bible. I mean, we only just heard it read and I’m sure that many of you also read along, so it should be fresh in your minds anyways. But I’m also aware that, now that I’ve told you that you can’t do something, you also probably feel this irresistible temptation to do it anyways. That is human. But resist that temptation.

I don’t want you to look because I want to share with you an experience that I had a couple of weeks ago. I was attending the Festival of Homiletics – a gathering that allows church leaders to hear some of the best and most creative preachers in this hemisphere as they preach and talk about preaching. It was a great experience. And I was listening to a conversation between two preachers.

One of them was Nadia Bolz-Weber, a rather amazing Lutheran preacher, and she was talking about how we can sometimes skip over verses. And she pulled out, for example, the passage we read this morning – the passage that is traditionally read every year in churches on this day, the Day of Pentecost.

A Throwaway Verse

And she was remarking that she had been reading and preaching on this passage for years and had found it to be very powerful. But if you had asked her, over those many years, if there was one verse that she could have dropped, that was completely incidental and you didn’t need to bother thinking about, it would have to be the first verse of the chapter.

That verse didn’t matter one bit and it wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t there in the Bible. But then, last year, she took out this chapter and she just couldn’t get past the first verse. All of a sudden that one verse that she would have been ready to just throw right out of the Bible for years meant the world to her.

Now, at this point, I was feeling pretty much like I’m sure you’re feeling right now. Because I didn’t have a Bible with me. I didn’t have a bulletin with the text in front of me. I was asking myself what on earth the first verse of the chapter said. I’m pretty sure every preacher listening was wondering. Certainly, the other preacher up on the stage was wondering because she asked. Then Nadia Bolz-Weber read us the verse. Chapter two of the Book of Acts starts like this: “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.”

Caught Off Guard

And as I heard those words, I felt the tears come to my eyes. I knew exactly what she meant. Whoo, talk about a powerful book, eh? Talk about a tricky book! I mean, it is almost as if God, through some process of inspiration, planted that verse right there so many centuries ago. And it just sat there, unassuming, a completely benign verse that everybody just read over and forgot and then, all of a sudden, in 2022, boom! It hits us over the head. It suddenly means the world.

Because yes, we took it for granted that being able to gather together and worship and pray in one place was something that we could do at any time. Granted, we didn’t always do it. There were other things that got in the way or that seemed more important at the time. I have long said that one of the marks of any Christian in our society is that they are, at the very least, aware of which church they don’t go to on Sunday. But we at least knew that the possibility was there.

But then, suddenly, the possibility wasn’t there. And we did find ways to meet virtually and that was good and it taught us many things. There were some definite pluses to it, as a matter of fact. But that did not change the sense of loss that we felt and still feel. And because God understands how we feel, I truly believe that God has sent us a message this morning. God wrote it for us more than 1900 years ago. It has been delivered to us this morning. And that message is, “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.”

What its Telling us

So, let us think today about what that verse means in the story of Pentecost. Pentecost is, in the minds of many Christians, the birthday of the Christian church. Yes, the story of salvation centres around Easter Sunday. The resurrection of Jesus brings us the hope of life beyond death and of victory beyond the defeats of this world. But the creation of the church would have to wait fifty days until, with the gift of the Holy Spirit, Christ would bring it into being.

But this verse is a reminder that, before the rushing of the wind and before the descending flames of fire, there was something else that made Pentecost possible – the simple fact that they were all together in one place. And we believe that it was God who made the wind rush. And it was God who made the flames come down. These things were signs of the presence of God’s Holy Spirit, a gift that made the church a possibility. But could God have given that gift if the people of the church had not gathered together in one place?

Gathering in Person Matters

On one hand, the answer to that question is yes, of course. God can do whatever God wants. But, on the other hand, there seems to be no question that there was something essential about the church gathering on that day. There is something about feeling the warmth of other human bodies around you. There is something about hearing and feeling one another’s breaths and being able to greet one another with the clasp of a hand or what the early church called a holy kiss. And when we do things together in one another’s presence, when we pray or when we sing, there is always, always a sense that when you put us all together the whole is inexplicably greater than just the sum of the parts. Pentecost can’t just be about the Spirit. It also has to be about these bodies gathered together.

Back to Babel

And yet, at the same time, the gathering alone is not enough. People have long noticed that there is a connection between the story of Pentecost in the Book of Acts and the story of the tower of Babel in the Book of Genesis. The author of the Book of Acts clearly chose to write his story as a kind of parallel to the story in Genesis. The languages get confused in Genesis and then they get unconfused in Acts. And it is important to note that the story in Genesis also begins with people coming together. “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.”

So there, too, we have bodies coming together in a certain place at a certain time. And as a result of that gathering, they too feel the impulse and the ability to reach for something that is greater than just the sum of the parts. They even see in their uniting a possibility to reach a higher spiritual plane, which is represented by this idea of building a tower to heaven.

But, of course, in Genesis that impulse is a negative thing. The story illustrates that the simple fact of us coming together does not always lead to positive outcomes. Sometimes we just come together because we each think that we can build our own tower, our own way to heaven. But when that is all we are doing, it is only going to break down in fighting with each other and starting to speak our own languages because we’re only focused on our own needs. That just ends in division, just like happened on that plain in Shinar.

Pentecost Repairs Babel

But when we pair that coming together in body with an openness to the power of God’s Spirit, we are able to open ourselves to embrace something bigger than just our own ambition. We can learn to put aside our own agendas so that we can embrace the possibility of what God would like to do among us and through us.

I realize that the world has changed in some very important ways over the past two and a half years. I understand that we have learned new ways of interacting with one another without necessarily being together in the same space. Some of those lessons have been very good. I understand that the world is not going to just go back to the way it was, nor do I think that it ought to. But let us not be afraid to take some time to grieve what we have lost. And let us make the effort, starting today, to retake what we can.

Every one of us needs to judge for ourselves. Only you know all of the various issues of safety and protection of others that is necessary in your case. Only you can decide what will maintain the proper balance in your life, but I would challenge you to find some places in your life where you embrace the power that is present in that simple act of being together in one place. I would encourage you to make it a priority to gather with believers in one place, ideally in this place. I would encourage you to find ways to pray in the presence of others and to enter into some experience of worship. There is power in being able to do that.

Open to the Spirit

Yet, at the same time, since it is Pentecost and we are celebrating the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church, a gift that brought the church into being, let me also encourage us all to do this with an openness to the presence of God’s Holy Spirit. Let us not make the mistake that was made on the plain of Shinar and become so obsessed with our own agendas and accomplishing our selfcentred goals. The true power of being able to come together comes to us when we are able to set aside all of that and to embrace the possibility that God is calling us, in unity, to create something bigger than any one of us as individuals.

But let us find ways to come together as God’s people. Do it online, sure, there will be times when we get a lot of meaning out of doing that. But let us also not forsake joining together because, when we do, we have a God who can do some pretty amazing and surprising things. We have a God so amazing that God hid a message for us today in a text written centuries upon centuries ago.